Amendment 2: - Right to Bear Arms DAMN RIGHT! Get over it!

And you presumed right, military strategy is not really my field of expertise :p

But the topic of the OP is all about law abiding American people and their lawful right to bear arms, not their military?
From the OP all I got was that Slayer was over people telling him he shouldnt keep a gun, maybe I missed something.

But the topic of the OP is all about law abiding American people and their lawful right to bear arms, not their military?

Since you're owning up to an inherent obtuseness, I will do my best to explain this simply and as clearly as I can. Let me begin, even though I am
pretty certain the Second Amendment has all ready been quoted in this thread, by citing that Amendment:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be
infringed."

The purpose of a well armed populace is to have a well regulated militia. Further, the Constitution for the United States of America did its best to
prevent standing military's by insisting that Congress would have to approve funding every two years for any military.

That Congress has for almost one hundred years now, approved every two years funding for standing armies is a questionable legality. It was incumbent
upon the American people to question this, but for whatever reasons standing armies were instead accepted.

It is worth taking a look at just one state Constitution - every state within the union has their own Constitution - that being the State of Virginia,
to get an idea of how suspicious our Founders were of standing armies:

Section 13. Militia; standing armies; military subordinate to civil power. That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people,
trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be
infringed; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under
strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

It is late,and I have to shut down for the night, but I am hoping that a careful reading of that section of the Declaration of Rights within the
Virginia Constitution might give you a better idea about the clear distinction made between the people and standing armies.

You don't become a superpower by acting passively. America has warred its way around the globe, I'm not quite sure how you've missed that. Anyway, to
be honest- America is losing its superiority complex- the dollar is not far off collapsing, its an economic nightmare. The days of dictating to the
world are soon to be over.
America will recover though but will have lost its place as superpower.

Lifecitizen,

Only Americans are so stupid that they go around the world fighting war after war and don't bring home any spoils.

You understand what I mean here ...the victors get the spoils..that kind of olde dictum and geopolitics.

Only Americans can be that stupid as to go to war and then not bring home any spoils and then as a nation continue on as if this is normal...it is
not. Most nations would have gone under with such stupid policies.
But Americans really are that stupid.

We have been fighting someone else's wars and for someone else's profits for over a hundred years. We are the boot lackeys for someone else's
world.

Another thing LifeCitizen, I never believe such from most peoples as Europe has conducted wars..over and over and over....in Europe and around the
world. It has been a bloody mess.
Most peoples do not know of the wars in Europe following Waterloo. In the 1840s..again in the 1870 ...leading up to WW1. Most haven't a clue about
this history as it is seldom taught or mentioned.

I never buy into this stuff about America being warlike. The Europeans have a much longer history of wars than do we. This is one of the great
deceptions of our leadership here and also in Europe.

Some of us do know some history.

What bothers most peoples is the knowledge of what America can do in war when we finally decide to take off the gloves. For this is what is recorded
in history.

I am with Jean Paul Zodeaux on this. Most of the world thinks they are so morally superior because most Americans know so little history ..much
less..even American History.

Most Americans have no concept of what a bloody mess the rest of the world has been throughout history. If they knew they would not take such nonsense
from the rest of the world about this country. I believe our educational and media information outlets are designed to keep Americans ignorant about
almost everything and anything..including this line of thinking.

Maybe I missed something but isn't this thread about Americas right to bear arms, or more specifically, American people and their right to
bear arms?

So what has this got to do with the wars you mentioned?? Most Europeans do not have the right to keep and bear arms without the blessings of their
governments.

Take a look at the weapons that are begin shipped to Libya to the rebels. They are mostly a variation of the FN/FAL rifle.

This is not a Com block weapon like the SKS, AK 47, AK 74, RPK et al. But a European made rifle. It is not one made or used by America.
Weapons dealers are still alive and well in this world.

Ironic to me that nations which very strictly regulate or forbid weapons to their own peoples can deliver huge quantities of weapons to other
countries.

Trust a Libyan with a rifle and ammunition but not your own people. Is this moral??? Or just expedient. Is expedient moral??

In most European nations you can join the military, be trained to use a weapon/weapons..fight dirty wars for your government ...but when you get out
..you cannot own a weapon without government blessings. That doesn't even make good nonsense.

How are we rubbing our right's in other countries faces? Are you jealous, perhaps?? If you would have said we meddle in other countries
business, yes you would be correct. I hate that we are basically World Police, I don't agree with it. I fail to see however, how us US citizen's are
rubbing our rights in your face. I for one, don't care what your rights are if I don't live in your country.

No what America has is a societal problem that has allowed certain groups to become disenfranchised from society. Because of this (real or percieved)
disenfranchisement and the propogation of a culture that supports it we have reaped a crime problem. A big part of this problem comes from the black
market economies available in drugs, prostitution, and illegal immigrants. When a person feels they have no legitimate means to advance to the
position of a Warren Buffet or even an "upper middle class" income they will be tempted to find illicit ways.

It is not a weapon or a gun problem. If it was the murder rate would not have dropped by more than 50% over the last thirty years. Gun laws have been
getting more lax. They haven't gotten more strict. Yet, we are seeing a reduction in crime and not blood washed streets. We are seeing a reduction in
all violent crimes. We are actually safer on a per capita basis than England or Scotland.

In 2005 Scottland was declared the most dangerous "developed nation" in the world by the UN. England is actually the most violent country in Europe
now. It has a higher crime rate than America. Sexual assualt, domestic abuse, and assault against females are all on the rise. Tell those ladies how
happy they should be that thy don't have a gun problem. Maybe it will reduce the sting of being left to bleed and cry in an alley.

If America has a gun problem I will happily keep that problem. At least it gives me and my wife the chance to protect ourselves from predators. I much
rather have a falling crime rate and the right to protect myself than a rising violent crime rate.

Let's not focus on countries where women are raped and beaten. We can forget about countries like Brazil that have a much lower rate of gun
ownership, and extremely strict gun regulation, yet has a higher per capita "gun murder" rate. We can forget about similar countries like Jamacia
and Russia.

In Jamacia an American was recently jailed for having a single round of ammunition in the crease of his luggage. It was a bag he had used to carry
guns to the gun range at home. The single round was a loose round that was left in the bag completely by accident. Their gun laws are ridiculously
restrictive. Yet they still have a murder rate of 60 per capita. That is roughly 12 times that of America.

Hey we'll even give Venezuela a pass. Their murder rate is so high that Chavez has made it illegal to report the numbers. They have even outlawed all
civilian guns in certain parts of the country. The murder rate still has not dropped enough to make it digestable to the outside world.

If you want to talk about a gun problem, a weapon problem, or a murder problem there are 88 countries well ahead of us. Many of them with much
stricter laws than America.

Like I said I'll keep our so called gun problem. It is serving us much better than the highly restrictive policies in many other countries.

First off, let me apologize if this has already been addressed, but even though I have been a member for quite a while I almost never log in...I'll
lurk and read what's happening from time to time but I lost interest in participating in threads that degrade into idiocy after the first two pages
or so long ago, and I don't have the patience to read through 17 pages of poor grammar, poor spelling, and ideology from both sides of the issue. I
am posting this in response to p00hbear's questions since I see them continually being brought up by non-Americans time after time and I am married
to an English woman who was originally equally baffled by the gun situation here and scared of guns in general.

Before I address the specific questions, I need to point out that the US Constitution, unlike the English or UK "constitution" is an actual document
that is supposed to be the supreme law of the land, amendable only under extraordinary means as opposed to being an unwritten body of accumulated
common law that can be changed at will by legislation or judicial fiat. Also, the US Supreme Court recently affirmed that the 2nd Amendment indeed
confers an individual right to own firearms. The reasons and arguments can be found elsewhere, including the Federalist Papers (a series of
publications explaining the Constitution and Bill of Rights to the populace), so I will not discuss that here.

Until the period shortly before and after WWII, the general populace had the ability to be better armed, or at least as well armed, as the armed
forces, with submachine guns, self-loading rifles, and other such weaponry, provided one could afford it.

One caveat I must make is that gun laws vary wildly from state to state and even within states by municipality, so my answers are by necessity
generalizations.

Now to the questions...

1.When is it legal to fire a weapon with intent to kill?

Lethal force is authorized in defense of one's own life or that of others immediately threatened.

2.Can you fire at someone for illegally entering a property?

No, not unless they pose an immediate threat. You can't just kill someone for trespassing.

3. Is there any control over the storage of guns and ammo?

An intelligent person does this without thinking...the laws vary by locality, but generally speaking they should be locked up separately and some
states/localities have strict requirements.

So it's a mixed bag of laws...some places make it almost impossible to own any weapon, others have no restrictions at all. Interestingly, places with
the most restrictive gun laws also tend to have the highest gun death rates (big cities with gangs) as opposed to places where people are armed and
the bad guys know they might get shot. It is what it is and I'm not going to get sucked into any debates. Hope this is useful. Good Night.

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